The previous article in this series described the ‘engine’ of the trading computer system. The components discussed here will be crucial in allowing you to get maximum performance from that reliable, high-speed ‘engine’ you’ve assembled ‘under the hood’.
Video Cards
PCI, AGP, PCI-Express are all types of video card interfaces. Nearly all systems today are integrating PCI-Express, which is the newest and most scalable type approach with video cards. Nearly all new video cards have dual output for dual monitor display. This is usually in one DVI (digital) and one VGA (analog) flavor. If purchasing a video card with a DVI port and you are not running a digital LCD monitor, then you will need a DVI to VGA converter/adapter. Most DVI capable LCD monitors will have the capability of running VGA (analog), so you will not need to worry about VGA to DVI adapters (they are in the hundreds of dollars).
Another concern is the size of the onboard video memory and graphics processor. Memory on the video card is important to traders and yet isn’t important to traders at the same time. Anything over 128mb will be sufficient, as long as it isn’t hyper-memory. Many video card manufacturers use a trendy term called “hyper-memory” which isn’t as dandy as the name implies. It is a term used when the video card will steal some of the system memory for its own use, which truly defeats the purpose of video RAM. 256mb or 512mb video card versions WILL NOT help populate your charts quicker or give you an advantage, nor will having the latest gaming video card.
The processor on the video card isn’t as important for traders as you may think it is. If the video card has dual monitor support, chances are that the GPU is good enough. The most important aspect of the video card is compliance and reliability. Just because it will fit into a slot in your motherboard does not mean it will be reliable or work the way you want it to. There are hardware and also software conflicts that can arise, which makes the video card selecting process very tedious. General rule of thumb to guide you is to stick with ATI chipset or nVidia chipset, NEVER mix the two as that is a recipe for disaster. Also try to stay with the same manufacturer if you decide to take the “do it yourself” approach.
Operating System
Microsoft is of course really the only name that traders need to worry about for their new trading computer. Microsoft Windows XP is the operating system of choice because of its ease of use, networking and security features, and the fact that trading and broker software was designed around it. Microsoft is working on a new operating system called “Vista”. I caution early adopters that it may not be very friendly to your broker or charting software. With every new major software product release, there will be bugs galore. I would wait at least 6 months before testing out Vista and try to get confirmation from your software vendors on whether or not their software is Vista compliant.
Backup
It is important for traders of every level and type to have a backup plan for their important data. There is a hardware and software approach to backing up. The hardware approach involves having additional hard drives either in a RAID setup or simply to copy/paste files. A RAID 1 mirror mode setup is where you have two identical SATA hard drives setup in a RAID 1 configuration that will mirror each other. What I mean by this is that whatever you do on one hard drive, it will do the exact same thing to the other. This is a redundant backup process in which if one hard drive fails, you have one other physical hard drive with the exact same data and information to boot from. However, if you do get a virus, it will be on both hard drives.
This is where the software approach comes into play. There are software vendors that have backing up software that will “ghost” your hard drive so that you can resort back to a prior date in the future. There are many that will do a bare backup where it will make an exact image copy that you can burn to a DVD or copy to a backup hard drive and then there are some that will give you the ability to boot into that image. For the most redundancy, you would have a RAID 1 configuration with backup ghosting software.
This is the final article in the series. Hopefully you now realize that every computer is not equal and that one computer may work out for person A but not be sufficient for person B. There is definitely a lot that needs to go into the research part of this very important aspect of your trading. A computer is a tool that can give you an advantage and edge in the market place just as your techniques and software does. You owe it to yourself to go through the due diligence process. Ask questions, shop around and make educated decisions on what will be the most important investment to ensure the success of your currency trading.
The author, Jordan Peterson, of Custom Trading Computers, Inc. is a well-known expert in custom built high performance computers, which must be specifically designed for currency traders. Such computer systems can handle heavy volume trading periods with complete success and without any danger of locking up.
